In recent years, requirement for improving performance of the photographic lightsensitive material has been more and more severe and higher image quality such as excellent sharpness and excellent color reproduction has been required.
Furthermore, to cope with instantaneousness of an electrophotographic material, more shortened processing time, namely, super high speed processing ability has recently been required. In order to realize the high image quality and the super high speed processing ability required for the photographic lightsensitive material, a great effort to thin layers of the photographic lightsensitive material and optimize a silver halide and additives has been made.
In general, it is well known that a dye is contained in the silver halide photographic lightsensitive material to improve image quality and sensitivity adjustment of a lightsensitive emulsion, for example, the dye is used for prevention of halation, prevention of irradiation and light absorbing filter. Furthermore, usage of the dye has recently been widened as mentioned below. That is, the dye is used for the purpose of substitution of a yellow colloidal silver in a color photographic lightsensitive material (hereinafter referred to as YC dye); the dye is used in a cross-over cut layer of a X-ray photographic lightsensitive material; and the dye is used in a nonsensitive emulsion layer of a printing photographic lightsensitive material.
The dye used for these purposes must have an excellent absorption characteristic in accordance with the purpose to use it. In the case of YC dye, it is preferable that the YC dye has an absorption in the wavelength of inherent sensitivity of silver halide, moreover, its absorption at longer wavelength is sharply cut so as not to bring sensitivity lowering of a green sensitized lightsensitive emulsion layer. Furthermore, the dye must satisfy the following items, namely, (i) the dye is completely decolored during developing process, (ii) it is easily leached out from the lightsensitive material during the developing process, (iii) stain caused by the residual dye after process does not occur, (iv) it does not bring an unpreferable affection such as fog, etc. to a lightsensitive emulsion, (v) it does not diffuse from a dyed layer to other layers, (vi) its stability with passage of time in the lightsensitive material or an emulsion coating solution is excellent so as not to cause discoloration.
In order to satisfy the above-mentioned items, various dyes have been proposed, for example, azo dye, oxonole dye described in British Patent No. 506,385, Japanese Patent Examined Publication No. 39-22069, merocyanine dye described in U.S. Pat. No. 2,493,747, styryl dye described in U.S. Pat. No. 1,845,404 are proposed.
These dyes are generally dissolved in water or water miscible organic solvent and then added to a photographic construction layer. However, in cases where the dye is water soluble, it diffuses through all layers from a layer where the dye is desired to stay. In order to attain intended purpose, more amount of the dye including amount of the dye diffusing to other layers is necessary to be added so that unpreferable phenomena such as sensitivity lowering, gradation deviation, fog formation, etc. are found in both the layer to which the dye is added and other layers. Specifically, in cases where the photographic material is stored with passage of time, occurrence of fog or sensitivity lowering is remarkable and to reduce using amount of the dye to prevent these problems leads not to obtain sufficient light absorbing effect. To meet these problems, a dye having reduced diffusibility so as to dye a specified layer is known, for example, as nondiffusible dyes, oil soluble dyes are described in U.S. Pat. Nos. 2,538,008, 2,538,009, 4,420,555, 4,940,654, Japanese Patent Publication Open to Public Inspection (hereinafter referred to as JP-A) Nos. 61-204630, 61-205934, 62-32460, 62-56958, 62-92949, 62-222248, 63-40143, 63-184749, 63-316852, 1-179042, 3-75632, 3-109535, 3-144438, 3-179441, 4-362634, 5-53241, 5-86056, 5-209133, 5-289239 and 5-296848.
A method to immobilize the dye using fine solid particle of a water insoluble dye are described in World Patent WO No. 88/4,794, U.S. Pat. No. 4,923,788, JP-A Nos. 63-197943, 64-40827, 1-155341, 1-172828, 2-1839, 2-110453, 3-23341, 3-206443, 3-216644, 3-216645, 3-216646, 3-217838, 3-231241, 4-37740, 4-37841, 4-44033, 4-116548, 4-296848, 5-197079, 6-110155. Further, the photographic lightsensitive material containing fine solid particle dispersion of the dye which is derived from a nitrogen containing heterocyclic ring bonded with an acidic nucleus through a methine chain is described in U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,213,957, 5,665,528, and JP-A No. 8-50345.
However, decoloring ability of these dyes are insufficient in processing processes so that these dyes has defect to cause color stain after processing. In cases where rapid process, improvement of processing solution composition and improvement of photographic emulsion composition are employed, these dyes are insufficient in terms of leachability and nondiffusibility so that these dyes diffuse to other layers when stored to lead to sensitivity loss and fog formation.